


Memory

by scioscribe



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Kiss, Getting to Know Each Other, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Two hotshot pilots, too many memories, and one obligatory trip to Hoth.





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> Past Bodhi/Galen; background canon-divergence of the _Rogue One_ team surviving the mission to Scarif.

“That’s more useful than anything I’ve done with mine,” Bodhi said.

He caught the medal of bravery before it could hit the floor. It was the most graceful move he’d made since Scarif, since the healing bay, since the feeling had come back to the right side of his body: it still seemed like a marvel that he could be aware of his own fingertips. A month of near-constant bacta dips and surgical adjustments, a month during which it had seemed like all that would change would be the _quality_ of the pain—now burning, now grating, now throbbing, now piercing. But now here he was, with his skin feeling newborn-sensitive and looking, on the whole, no worse for wear. Well-prepared, if nothing else, to stop things from falling, which, now that he thought about it, was piloting in the most general sense.

“Well,” Luke Skywalker said a little ruefully, “getting it to hover doesn’t really do anything.”

Bodhi handed the medal back to him. “But it’s practice, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but I don’t even know what I’m practicing for. It’s like trying to teach yourself the vibra-harp by plucking one string at a time, except there’s a thousand strings and you don’t know any songs.” He shook his head. “But you didn’t come to hear me talk about that.”

No, but he would have. With Chirrut already on Hoth, no one else in the Rebellion talked about the Force as anything other than superstition, something to mumble for good luck before a mission, and Bodhi was interested—and more than that, he was interested in interest itself, in the way some people could turn their passion and knowledge into words, when everything for Bodhi had always been a matter of feeling.

He remembered Galen hunched over a drawing board, his hair pushed back into a loose and sloppy ponytail, tapping his stylus against the screen while he explained some theory. The stylus had left behind a single disconnected point of light.

Bodhi cleared his throat. “No. I didn’t come here to talk about that.” He tried to remember why he _had_ come and then, thankfully, the present came back to him, a sensation not unlike the first prickling of feeling in his fingers back in the med bay. “The princess—”

“You can call her Leia, you know.”

“We had a princess once on Jedha,” Bodhi said. “It’s an excuse to remember.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

It was silly because of course he had never known her—not him, not a boy with machine oil in the creases of his hands from a family where he had been the youngest who had gone the furthest, the baby boy not asked to go at sixteen to cultivate a protein farm or scavenge for droid parts. But it was too enormous to say—the bland stink of synthetic protein that had always been on his brother’s clothes, the electrical burns on his sister’s hands, the aerated fever that had taken them both, the queasy pride he had felt at being the one with good and steady work, the white scorch-out of Jedha City—and so he didn’t try. It was Bor Gullet, he thought. The only scar he had that would not heal, this new habit his mind had of throwing forth unwanted memories.

Wasn’t he good company like this? Full of long silences and grief.

“The princess cleared me to fly you to Hoth, she said you’d been wanting to go.”

“I have, and I can fly myself. No offense.”

“None taken,” Bodhi said. “You probably could. But she asked me to, so I will.”

Luke smiled. “For the man who piloted _Rogue One_ , you’re not that willing to go rogue.”

“I didn’t just pilot her, I named her.”

That won him a laugh in addition to the smile, and it was only then, in contrast, that Bodhi noticed that Luke looked the barest little bit like Galen—light honey hair long enough to run one’s fingers through, similar noses. “Then it’s especially true.”

“In the case of _Rogue One_ , I had to trust my own conscience. My conscience doesn’t tell me not to fly you to Hoth, but it does tell me I’m in the Alliance, and when I can, I should trust, and be trustworthy.”

“All right,” Luke said. He looked now almost how he had when Bodhi had come, before he had knocked on the door-frame to announce himself—singularly attentive but somehow relaxed. “Fly me to Hoth. I’ll enjoy the company anyway, it’s a long trip to spend alone. And maybe I can pick up a thing or two from the best pilot in the Rebellion.”

“It’s such bad luck to say that.”

“Well, I can’t jinx you anymore than you’ve already been jinxed, because if I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Han wants your autograph, you know that? He says even he couldn’t have made the run into Eadu undetected.”

Was he flirting? The feeling had come back more slowly to Bodhi’s heart than to his fingers.

“I have very bad handwriting,” Bodhi said. “He’d never know if I even wrote my own name.”

“I’ll tell him that and maybe it’ll cheer him up a little. So when do you want to leave?”

“You’ll need time to pack.”

Luke’s mouth seemed to stiffen even though he kept on sounding normal enough: “There’s nothing to pack. I didn’t bring anything with me from home, really.”

He hadn’t known that; he didn’t even know where Luke was from. As far as the Rebellion was concerned, the galaxy had molded him out of nothing but kyber and hope and then dropped him on their doorstep. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m better off than Leia,” Luke said. “Even better off than you. I could go back to Mos Eisley if I ever wanted to, though who knows why I would.” What he couldn’t go back to was left unsaid, as empty as whatever house he could no longer walk into, and Bodhi understood that.

Though whatever else grief was—however it leveled them, the mythic pilot and the mythic shot—it was no good for whatever had kindled up a second earlier. So much the better, really, which was what he told Cassian that night, the two of them having departure-night drinks even though Bodhi would be back in a week, making another supply-and-personnel run.

(“It’s tradition,” Cassian had said. “And it’s a free drink.”

So Bodhi waved away logic and enjoyed his free drink.)

So much the better, really.

“If telling yourself that makes you happier,” Cassian said. He drained his glass. “And you’re wasted on cargo.”

“Skywalker’s not cargo. Besides, I like it.” It felt like he was scrubbing dirt and grime off all his years hauling for the Empire. Why would he never call Princess Organa anything but that? Because he had flown the ships that had brought the crystals that had focused the beam that had turned her world into ash. He said the nearest thing to that that he could: “It’s peaceful.”

Cassian clasped him on the shoulder, his eyes warm, and not long after that said good night.

In the morning, Luke met him on the flight deck; he had managed to scrounge up enough for a small away bag after all. Bodhi wondered how much of it was clothes. Clothes, a lightsaber, and the medal of bravery, just enough to take up space and make it feel like he had a real life. Real lives had cargo, Bodhi knew.

“Ready to start shivering?” Luke said. “Is Jedha warm?”

“Not the whole planet, but my part of it.”

“I’m from the desert. Never really been anywhere cold.”

Bodhi’s unreliable mind gave him a sense memory of Eadu in winter. It had been weeks, Galen had said, since he’d had parole enough to go out even into the compound, to feel the wind on his face; Krennic had put the whole facility on red alert. “Some uprising somewhere that I know nothing about,” Galen had said, “and now I don’t even remember the cold. Is it snowing, Bodhi?”

“Yes. Here.” He had been inside so long at that point—through checkpoint after checkpoint—but the idea struck him sharply, a sense of physical intuition like knowing when to pull back on the throttle. He took his gloves from his pocket and, sure enough, there was still a scrim of snow frosted on the fingers. “You can feel.”

And his lips had been cold—he had proved that, too. That day had been the first time.

 _You’re not on Eadu_ , he reminded himself. _You’re with Luke, not with Galen._

“Where do you go when you do that?” Luke said.

Bodhi turned away, running a final systems check on the instruments panel. “When I do what?”

“Your mind—”

“You shouldn’t pry.” He said it more angrily than he meant to. He’d had enough of people in his head, even if Luke’s curiosity was gentler than the rubbery, wet hunger of Bor Gullet. He cleared his throat. “Green lights across the board. No problem having enough fuel to make it to Hoth.”

Luke exhaled. “Like you said, I’m still practicing. It all feels—fresh. Being able to feel the Force and the way it changes things, like wind blowing the dunes. I didn’t mean to ask. I didn’t even mean to know. I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s fine,” Bodhi said, but that was all the talking they did for takeoff and the first hour of the flight. He made the jump to hyperspace and watched the stars become a white blur: there was snowfall for you. He hadn’t brought anything to read, which was the kind of mistake a person made when he combined free liquor and silly infatuation. He left the autopilot on and went back into the cabin to watch Luke levitate things. Cutlery and glassware, this time, and at least he didn’t break the glasses when Bodhi walked in.

Luke let everything drift gently down to the table. “Anyway,” he said, like he was resuming a conversation, his smile sun-bright, “it was nice of you.”

“To fly you?”

“To show me what cold feels like.”

It startled a laugh out of him. “Bold, don’t you think?”

“Coming from you I call that a compliment.”

Bodhi shook his head. “I’m not bold. I did the wrong thing for years before I find the strength to do the right one, and only then—maybe not for the right reasons. There was someone I wanted to make happy. That wasn’t the only piece of it, but… I don’t know. I’m trying to learn how to listen to myself.”

“Me too, I think.”

Bodhi gestured toward a chair. “Do you mind if I watch?”

“No, but it’ll be boring.”

“Yes,” Bodhi said dryly, “I watch impossible things all the time.”

But not everything Luke did for the next hour or so was impossible. What ended up fascinating Bodhi most were the katas Luke moved through, with his lightsaber and without: they were beautiful but imprecise, as if he couldn’t decide, when extending one hand, what to do with his fingers, or, when moving his leg, whether to turn his foot out or leave it straight. He wasn’t clumsy, but it was all gulping and no sipping—that was the best Bodhi, never one for hand-to-hand, could do. Chirrut would have known how to put it.

Bodhi fumbled his way toward asking about this and landed on, “Do you just make those up? The movements?”

The beam of blue light vanished and Luke clicked the lightsaber back into place on his belt. “No. I had a—a friend, a teacher. He died.”

If they kept on offering commiseration to each other over the dead, they would never stop, but Bodhi still did it—it was a rite to perform, no different from how he had combed perfume through his brother’s hair and wound the white burial cloth around his sister. They were the words you said for comfort, even though you yourself knew how little they meant. Dead was dead and gone was gone.

“Chirrut might be able to show you something,” Bodhi offered. “He’s on Hoth already.”

“Chirrut Îmwe? I asked him already. He said he wasn’t a Jedi.”

“He’s not.” He shrugged. “But there are no more Jedi.”

“Ben was a Jedi. My teacher.” He said it with unyielding certainty, as if Bodhi had not grown up hearing a thousand my-cousin’s-friend’s-sister-saw-a-Jedi-knight stories, the new legends that had sprung up in alleyways, like the Empire had not killed them all but only scattered them to crawl like insects to a hundred different worlds. And then as if they knew some trick of coming out only when there was only one person—drunk or a child or sometimes, Bodhi thought, remembering his teen years with a wince, both—to see them. He hadn’t thought before about Luke being younger than he was, but he realized it then.

Luke said, “You don’t believe me.”

“I know you wouldn’t lie,” he said quickly.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows a Jedi.”

“I don’t _know_ someone who _knows_ someone who knows a Jedi,” Luke said, a little bit of razor wire threaded through his voice. “I _knew_ a Jedi, there’s a difference. His name was Ben Kenobi—Leia knew him too, he was a friend of her father’s. They fought in the Clone Wars together. He knew my father, too—my father was a Jedi.”

He couldn’t argue with that, with witnesses and history, and so he had to believe it. It bothered him that for some reason he didn’t want to.

The Jedi had turned into myth, and he didn’t like the idea of Luke being a myth, one more myth in a family of them. Maybe because he knew all too well that he wasn't one himself.

“All right. I trust you. He was a Jedi.”

Luke said, “Well, I’ll make sure to have six pieces of collaboration on my side the next time I want to tell you something you find hard to believe.”

He stormed off. Bodhi couldn’t really blame him, and then he decided he could, because he hadn’t acted like that when Luke had pried into his mind and—albeit without meaning to—made him feel ashamed of the disorder there, like someone opening the door on a messy house. It was agreeable to feel badly done-by, but that could only occupy him for so long. He decided in retrospect that Luke hadn't actually stormed off but only walked. So much for the moral high ground.

He was at least saved from coming to look for Luke by Luke coming to look for him.

“I started with the cockpit,” Luke said. “For a pilot, you’re not in it very much.”

“Nothing much to do in hyperspace.” He was glad they were ignoring their earlier argument. “You’re a pilot yourself, you should know.”

“Mostly short-range, though. I’m good on maneuverability. Patience, on the other hand…” He lifted one shoulder and grinned.

He didn’t look that much like Galen, Bodhi thought. Not really. His eyes were different, and of course he was so much younger. Blonder, too: straw and sand and sun in that hair. And—noticing this gave him a slight pang—he was of course more tan, given how little time Galen had spent outside.

“You know, it’s funny,” Luke said. “I was thinking of going to the Imperial Academy, right before everything happened. My aunt and uncle always said no, and I didn’t want to upset them, but—I was thinking of going anyway. If it hadn’t been for coming across the message from Leia, going to Ben like I did, I could have been a Stormtrooper.  Maybe a pilot then, for real.”

“You would have defected,” Bodhi said.

“Like Biggs?” The shadow of loss stayed on his face. Aunt, uncle, Ben, Biggs—whoever he was—all dead, then. “Maybe. I like to think I would have, but I don’t know.”

“You would have.”

“We could have run off together,” Luke said.

And that _was_ flirting, Bodhi knew it, and he wanted it, but he had to say what he needed to say first. “You would have run before I did, I think. It took me—it took me a long time, like I said. It was steady work, flying for the Empire. It paid well. And they brought me up the ranks quickly, until I was bringing the kyber right to the base on Eadu, and I liked that they trusted me to do it. I met Galen, and that changed things, and he wanted me to run, and I thought, at first, that if I did—well, that if I did, I wouldn’t see him again.”

“Did you run because of him? Like you said before, to make him happy?”

Bodhi shook his head, only sure of it now, very suddenly. “No. I left because I needed to—because I was forgetting who I was. Because I thought if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to face my family on the other side of things. And because Galen told me what the Death Star would do, and told me how I could stop it. What I did for him—” He breathed in. “What I did for him was leave him there, because he said if I tried to break him out, they would know, they would look, they would find the trap he’d hidden. I left him and he died.”

“You loved him?”

He nodded. “Don’t tell Jyn. Maybe it’s a mistake, but—I want her to keep on thinking her mother was his last love. She deserves that.”

“You’re kind,” Luke said.

“I’m a collaborator.”

“And I was a week away from being one. It doesn’t matter, you’re here now.”

That was nicely said, but he felt the weight of it—whatever Luke wanted to think, there was more weight in having done things than merely having intended to do them. The fact was the blood on his hands was there, and would not come out.

Luke sighed. “I don’t need the Force to know you’re tearing yourself apart again.”

“Sorry.” Bodhi pointed to his temple. “It’s not just the guilt, you know. I have a certain amount of trouble.”

“With guilt?”

“With memories, mostly. Not that they aren’t related.”

“You should practice forgetting,” Luke said, and then he stepped forward, his hand warm on Bodhi’s shoulder, and kissed him.

It was an inexperienced kiss, as if Luke had never had the chance for much practice, but that improved it, actually—Bodhi had no bad memories associated with this kind of awkwardness, this kind of eagerness. Chapped lips and bumped noses and slightly too much tongue. It felt hopeful.

So he didn’t break away, and things between them shifted. Luke’s hand drifted up into Bodhi’s hair and Bodhi mirrored the movement at first but then reached down, settled his palms against Luke’s back. It let him get closer, the embrace fitting their mouths together more tightly.

And then he did remember something, unasked-for and vivid, but not terrible. Fireworks, yellow and green and blue, in Jedha City, the colors of the old monarchy so the city could thumb its nose at the Empire and the Empire, arrogantly ignorant, would never even know. It was a warm memory, not like the winter he had first kissed Galen, and the colors were Luke’s colors, his hair and his eyes and his lightsaber and the green color of hope, of new things, new beginnings.

When Bodhi finally had to pull back, he said, “It’s a waste to send you somewhere so cold.”

He didn’t know if Luke could have known what he meant, but Luke seemed to, because he didn’t even blink, just said, “It won’t be cold when you’re there.”

Bodhi smiled. “Once I stop going back and forth.”

Luke touched his thumb to the corner of Bodhi’s mouth, looking contemplative. “Once you do. The war’s going to end, you know. I’m sure of it.”

He said it with the same unflappability with which he’d said he’d known a Jedi, and this time, with far less reason, Bodhi found himself believing it.

“Then I’ll come find you,” Bodhi said. “Instead of just going back and forth.”

It was impulsive, it was too much to commit, but he had waited too long to everything in his life that had been worth doing; maybe it was time to live up to his own word, that he would say what he felt, that he would believe what he believed. Go rogue. Even if it did seem silly.

Luke didn’t look like he thought it was silly at all. “You’ll remember?”

Bodhi felt playful, even though it took him a second to realize it. It’d been so long. “You were the one who just told me to start forgetting things.”

“I didn’t mean me!” Luke said, but the protest had already turned into a laugh. “Fine. I’ll just have to believe you, even though Han says all hotshot pilots are the love-them-and-leave-them type. But you can’t really take some of what Han says seriously.”

“You’re a hotshot pilot too,” Bodhi said.

“Tell that to Leia, with her giving me an escort and everything.”

“I think she did that for me, really. You’re my first assignment coming out of medical.”

“Oh, she wanted to give you a cake mission. I forgive her, then. Anyway, hotshot pilot or not, back home we, you know.” He had a slight, pink blush on his cheeks. “Fixed things up pretty quickly.  And thought you should be true if you said you'd be.”

Everyone thought that, Bodhi almost said, but then he felt the difference—felt Luke opening the difference up to him somehow, like a flower coming into bloom. It was the desert, Luke meant: the harshness of Tatooine, where no humans were native, where the environment didn’t suit them, not really. You were so attuned to what you had to rely on. Breathable air in the midst of sandstorms, clean water, families, companions. Instability was insecurity, the chance that you would one day be without something you needed. You wanted only what you could rely on, and you wanted to be reliable.

 _The Jedi used to sever attachments_ , Bodhi thought—that was part of the story, anyway—but he didn’t think Luke could do that. His upbringing had given him ties he could not cut, and all he was doing now was trying to make more.

So he _was_ new, then, in more ways than one. Bodhi had been right about that.

He answered Luke’s concerns about promises with another kiss, and then Luke said, “How much time until we get to Hoth?”, his breath a little rapid.

Bodhi said, “I can fly more slowly.”


End file.
